


Silver to Bind and Mend

by Beleriandings



Series: Tales of Lake Mithrim [12]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Shippy but not really shippy, maybe if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1744898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maedhros tells Fingon of his plans to abdicate in favour of Fingolfin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver to Bind and Mend

“Maitimo, I wanted to see you before you leave - ” Findekáno stopped short in the doorway, his hand frozen in the act of knocking on the doorjamb even as he stood upon the threshold. “Maitimo?”

An almost imperceptible wince at the name, but no other reaction. Maitimo sat motionless at the desk, beside him a box into which his scant few possessions on this side of the lake were in the process of being packed. The desk was thick with crumpled paper, discarded, hiding the stump of his right wrist from Findekáno’s sight.

 

Maitimo’s head was held forward; his hair - growing back in unruly tufts, just starting to fall into his eyes - hid his face but he held himself motionless, poised and intent on the object in his hand. The candle on the desk guttered, glinting off bright metal.

“Maitimo, is that - ”

“The crown.” He did not look up. “Yes. Macalaurë brought it to me when he visited.”

“Your crown” said Findekáno, uneasily. Before he had realised that his feet were taking him there he was at the corner of the desk. “Maitimo. Look at me.”

Again, that wince. “Don’t call me that.”

Findekáno frowned, extending his hand to turn Maitimo’s head to look at him, then withdrawing it before the motion was fully formed. “Look at me, Maitimo.”

He looked. Those silver eyes were blank at first sight, a study in determined, deliberate distance. A protection mechanism, Findekáno supposed. A habit.

Maitimo held out the crown, a flutter of – something – passing over his face. Findekáno was frowning, for he had spent his life looking into those silver eyes, learning the ways that hope, joy, apprehension, sadness, amusement, love, worry, anger, every shade of feeling looked when they flickered across them, the way the pale lashes brushed against freckled cheeks. He had been able to read that fair face as easily as his own name in black ink on white paper, for he been practicing for longer than he could remember. But Maitimo had never been as opaque to him as he was now. Findekáno chewed his lip.  _Now_   _I stumble blind in the dark._

He started a little, looking away from Maitimo’s face as he felt cold metal in his hands. It was almost with surprise that he looked down to see the crown lying there, a bright circle of silver against the flesh his palms. He pressed his eyes closed for a moment, feeling the smooth chill of the metal, the places where it had taken on the merest touch of warmth from Maitimo’s fingers. He stared at it, wondering what he was supposed to do. He moved to place it on Maitimo’s head, perhaps at a jaunty angle he thought. Something had stirred inside him, a need to make this a joke, although Maitimo’s face held no hint of humour.

And yet, even as he formed the thought, Findekáno drew back, clasping the crown more tightly, letting his fingers curl around it, for something had woken in him, a hitch in his breath, a flutter in his heart, a wildness, an exhilaration. For a scant moment he seemed suspended in doubt, his mouth slightly open, but a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he tried to pare away the layers of meaning in the gaze of Maitimo’s silver eyes, earnest now, shining for the first time since… well, since Findekáno had brought him back. Their fingers, Findkáno noticed with a jolt, just brushed each other against the metal, and in this moment Maitimo’s flesh felt warm, vital.

“What - ” he began, suspicions seeding and growing and uprooting each other in the space of seconds.

“Haru’s crown. Take it. Take it to your father.”

Findekáno raised an eyebrow. “It’s yours by right.”

“No. It  _was_  mine. I renounce that right. Claim. Whatever one wants to call it.”

“Do you mean…” Findekáno’s mind worked furiously. “Maitimo, why?”

The light ebbed a little from Maitimo’s eyes, and for a moment he seemed much younger than he was, younger than Findekáno had ever known him. Then something snapped back into place and his scarred face was hard again, unyielding marble, as though one of his mother’s statues had had its face scored and pitted by a chisel, destruction born of frustration. “The Oath” he said, his voice flat. “I am bound by blood and honour to one cause and one cause alone, Findekáno, and if I am to die in - ”

“Maitimo - ”

“ - if I am doomed to die for the works of my father’s hands, his  _legacy_ , then I shall do it.” He lifted his jaw, his mouth a grim line. “I would do it, Fin, whether or not the Oath bound me to it. But if I am doomed, as I surely am - ” he held up his hand, stilling Findekáno’s interruption “ – then I would not take the Ñoldor down into the dark with me. I owe our people better.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Your brothers - ”

“ – are bound by the same bonds as I am. They will surely hate the idea of the crown going to your father, but I am head of the house of Fëanáro now. They will obey me.”

There was something in Maitimo’s voice that left Findekáno no room for doubt on that point.

“And what of me?”

Maitimo raised an eyebrow. “What  _of_  you? You will be Crown Prince.” His face changed, a hint of affection curling his lips at the corners. He sighed. “It’s less than you deserve, Fin. You deserve everything that I have to give you and so much more.”

Findekáno smiled, tentatively reaching out to touch Maitimo’s cheek, limned with ragged scars, slowly silvering as the weeks slipped by. Maitimo still flinched away from the touch, but less violently than he had used to, at the beginning.  _Progress_ , Findekáno told himself. “You’ve already given me all I wanted, simply by being alive.”

“I didn’t mean only for saving me” said Maitimo quietly.

 _What do I say that will not bring the memories flooding back, crushing him, burning his mind from the inside out?_  Findekáno bit his lip. “Very well” he said on an impulse, letting a bright grin spread over his face, allowing the mere act of smiling to lift his mood, to ease the strangeness that was still strung taut as a harp string between them. It was a familiar routine to fall back on, and, as often as not, it helped a little at least. “I should rather like to be a Crown Prince, I think.”

“And heir to the throne of the High King.”

“Ha! For all the time I spent as eleventh in line for the throne, I’m now first in line? Who would have thought it?”

“Tenth. You were tenth in line. Tyelpë is a child.”

“He was still ahead of me as far as succession went” groused Findekáno, but the smile was still on his face.

Maitimo rolled his eyes in mock exasperation, but he too was smiling, although wanly. “Does it matter now? Your father will be King. You are his heir. If something should happen…” he broke off.

They were silent for another moment, a silence into which unsaid words rippled, like stones dropped into a still pool.

“They’ll think I made you do it” said Findekáno at last. “They’ll think it was my price for saving you. Or they’ll think my father dreamed up the whole thing.”

“They? Who is this ‘they’?”

“Everyone. The Ñoldor. Our people.”

Maitimo shrugged, a touch of a smile coming to the corners of his eyes, an eyebrow raised. “Let them think that. It can’t harm your image to appear a little scheming, I suppose. A little ruthless.”

“You would have them fear my father? You would have him rule by virtue of - ”

The smile was gone now, replaced by that burning silver in his eyes again, bright as fever, almost, but more lucid than Findekáno had seen him in a long while.  _Perhaps he never really did come back from Angband, at least not until this moment._  “I would have him rule by virtue of the fact that he is the son of the late, great High King Finwë, and that he wears his father’s crown. I would have an end to strife within our family, and the divisions amongst our people.”

Findekáno compressed his lips. “Your father is hardly blameless when it comes to divisions amongst our people.”

Maitimo’s face crumpled. “I know. And now I must atone.”

They held each other’s gazes for a long while.

“So be it” said Findekáno at last. “Crown Prince. I rather like it.”

Maitimo inclined his head. Slowly, tentatively, he reached out to clasp Findekáno’s hand in his, making a studied effort to hold his gaze. Unlike the days since his rescue, his touch was unflinching, although his fingers trembled. Slowly, he kissed the backs of Findekáno’s fingers, the place where a king or prince would have worn a ring of office, in the past at least.  _Who knows what traditions we shall keep in this new world._ Findekáno could see in his eyes how much effort it was costing Maitimo to keep his hand steady, and in answer he drew himself up a little taller, bowing stiffly, formally.  _He is unbreakable_ , thought Findekáno, wonderingly.  _His spirit burns silver bright._   _There is hope for him still. And if there is hope for him, there is hope for us all._


End file.
